Nurses at 2 Hospitals Plan Second Strike

Just weeks after returning to work, registered nurses at the St. John’s hospitals in Oxnard and Camarillo said Tuesday that they will call a second strike--this time for four days, starting Feb. 1--because management has not budged on the issue of staffing.

The nurses recently came off a two-week walkout that centered on their union’s demands to have a say on how many patients should be assigned to each nurse. Nurses say excessive patient-to-nurse ratios are endangering medical care and destroying morale.

Since the nurses returned to work, talks between the Service Employees International Union and hospital administrators have yielded little progress on staffing, nurses said.

“I can sum it up as saying nothing has changed,” said Susan Franks, an emergency room nurse at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard who sits on the union bargaining committee. “I see no movement on their side to respect the nurses’ opinion that things need to change. We say nurses should have a say in staffing and they disagree--and that’s where it is.”

Franks said the 530-member union opted for a four-day walkout next week because it was financially more manageable than asking members to go another two weeks without pay.

The nurses and management have scheduled their next negotiation sessions for Tuesday and Jan. 31 to try to head off the latest strike threat.

Officials at the Oxnard facility and St. John’s Pleasant Valley in Camarillo say the strike is all about the national union’s trying to organize health-care workers throughout the state. They note that the hospitals gave nurses $1.4 million in raises, which the officials maintain will make it easier to recruit and retain staff.

The hospitals have also promoted the concept of nursing committees to discuss issues of staffing, but nurses have balked, saying such panels have little authority.

“While the hospital welcomes the SEIU’s input on staffing, it is important to note that more than two dozen state and federal regulator agencies, as well as physicians, who are part of the hospitals’ medical staffs, monitor patient safety and staffing levels,” said Armando Azarloza, spokesman for both hospitals, which are owned by Catholic Healthcare West.

Azarloza said that since the last strike, which began Dec. 14, the two sides have talked about performance evaluation issues, tuition reimbursement and seniority.

During the walkout, the hospitals flew in replacement nurses from U. S. Nurses Corp., a Denver-based agency specializing in temporary nonunion nurses, but this time, administrators are counting on enough nurses’ crossing the picket lines and workers from other area hospitals to help pick up the slack.

But Azarloza said replacement workers would be flown in again if necessary.

The nurses say they will continue such job actions until the hospitals begin to bargain in good faith.

“They have told us they will not give us anything the law doesn’t require them to,” said Jaimie Mendoza, a nurse who sits on the bargaining committee. “We haven’t even been able to discuss staffing numbers. They won’t even talk about staffing ratios. They disregard the fact that the union even exists.”